Communities and the European Green Deal: opening ‘sites of struggle’ for a democratic energy transition

On the path to climate neutrality, the European Green Deal aims to address the economy and society inclusively, ‘leaving no one behind’ in the energy transition. Energy democracy highlights the role for diverse communities in this transition. This paper interrogates how inclusive the European Green Deal is through a content analysis of four policies. It finds a limited role envisioned for communities, focused on techno-economic communities of interest (including energy communities) contributing to EU initiatives. This largely ignores the multitude of diverse activities through which groups collectively engage in energy systems. A key contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that to achieve the goals of energy democracy, the European Green Deal must facilitate diverse, deliberative ways to ‘act all together’, with communities as important actors. Communities can act as a ‘site of struggle’ whose deeper engagement could lead to more democratic and richer outcomes for policy and research.